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Laura Rittenhouse
Category:
Mainstream
Publisher: Wings ePress
ISBN-10: 1613098189
Type: Fiction
Pages: 238
Copyright: January 1, 2016
ISBN-13: 9781613098189
Price: $3.99 (eBook)
On the surface, Vicky's a contented woman with grown children and a happy marriage. Below that surface, Vicky struggles with a dissatisfaction she can't quite put her finger on but the reason is all too obvious: she's having an affair with her boss.
Her New Year's resolution is simple, figure out why she's behaving like a fool by writing an honest account of her actions and observations in a diary. As honest as she can be, anyway.
Vicky, a woman old enough to know better, finds herself in the midst of a heart wrenching affair. Her children are grown and her marriage is comfortable, Vicky should be content. But she's not and she can't figure out why. Her New Year's Resolution is to put her thoughts and torments down in a diary. Her goal is to understand how her life drifted so far off course. Eventually she hopes to return to the life she loved, the life she's sure is right for her. Confessions spans one year in Vicky's life. Her family - husband, son, daughter, sister and brother-in-law, play large in her story. As the year progresses, Vicky learns that she's not the only one living a double life, not the only one projecting a face to the world that is different than the person behind the mask. As the scales fall from Vicky's eyes, all that's left is the unanswerable question: what life is right for her?
Excerpt
"I mean it, Darren. I quit. Both this job and this affair. None of it's right for me." Vicky's mind ran up and down the same well-worn path as she threw the ball for Wally. He never had learned to catch his ball on the first bounce, but he never tired of trying. Sometimes other dogs in the park with more athletic ability or maybe more brazenness would beat him to his toy, but today he and Vicky were alone. It was still early and, except for a few joggers at the edge of the park, the field was theirs. Wally never cared what time it was when his ball was in play and Vicky hadn't been able to sleep anyway. Today she wouldn't let herself go to bed without ending the affair. It's not like it brought her much pleasure anymore anyway. The sex was still good but the excitement of being attractive to a man that any woman would consider a catch had been beaten down by months of guilt and frustration.
The ball landed on Vicky's foot and Wally backed up a few paces, waiting to see where she'd throw it next. She always threw it in exactly the same place, at exactly the same speed, but Wally defied Pavlov's law. Each toss was a new game to him. Each day a new adventure. Vicky admired his enthusiasm and his ability to ignore the proof of time. If she could do that, maybe she wouldn't have to call off the affair.
After another fifteen minutes of this repetition: I quit, toss, I quit, toss, Vicky attached the leash to Wally's collar and he picked up his ball, as thrilled to be going home as he had been to come out on this early morning excursion. She didn't notice that he panted more heavily than he would have a few years earlier. Like the colour of his whiskers, Vicky had frozen Wally's fitness level in time the day Peter had moved out and she had become primary caregiver for the loveable mutt. She had no idea she wore permanent blinkers, much less how much of the world she missed because of her tunnel vision.
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